instrumental

Another freejazz variant that I’ve been watching since a long time ago is Shining, once again hailing from Scandinavia. I guess the libertarian social atmosphere must help creativity flourish in the north of Europe

California’s Upsilon Acrux may not be as intense as grindcore bands in tempo and noise, but it’s complex oddtimed riffage and polyrhythmic drumming (and silly album names?) is quite correctly labeled as “brutal prog“.

Rock music is converging more and more into jazz & electronic music, with unconventional compositions & song structures and thank God MTV has not delved into this territory yet. Manufactur is a Swiss 4 piece that wrestles formulaic music with their own homebrew jazzy math-rock.

We’re living in this silly little modern world, where indie is the new pop, folk is the new black and prog is the new alternative. The fact for instance, that an old song by Mogollar (Les Moguls) is the official Playstation 3 ad shows how people are returning to roots more and more each day.

Cécile Schott the Parisian native instrumentalist whom I always thought “Colleen” was her real name, is back with a new album on her home Leaf. Yesteryear’s “Colleen et les boîtes à musique” could be labeled a concept album that satisfied her javanese love with a musical box, which was still good but not as engaging as her previous stuff.

Colorado’s IZ, formed by guitarist Michael Serviolo is a power trio, with bassist Tom Sublet and drummer David Kerman. Their 2006 album E-M remained below the radar somehow but I think it’s worth a few listens, if you’re into experimental heavy stuff. Progressive riffs, timechanges, abrupt stops and noise is abound on E-M released by the experimental household RERUSA.

Thanks to digital technology and the constant remasters, music is becoming increasingly timeless, in a few years probably a huge amount of more music would be remastered and digitized. Although I’m sure it’s impossible to feel most of the energy without actually being involved in that particular scene and culture in the right time..

So today I want to write about 2 Klezmer bands which have been on my listening habits for some time. Balan: Book of Angels Vol.5 is the 4th release of The Cracow Klezmer Band on (guess what) Tzadik.